After some wildly impractical camouflage in the Commando Troopers battle pack, there's something oddly refreshing to see Geonosis troopers in what seemingly makes a lot more sense in a world made primarily of dust and what the easter egg dye looks like after the first couple of eggs. Geonosis popped up a few times during the Clone Wars cartoon, even though we saw the seperatist armies trying to evacuate the planet at the end of the movie.

The set also gives us a walker, which I've been known to love, and revisists the rather classic clone walker design from other battle packs. The twist is obviously giving us the new gattling-style barrel on the front to go with our troopers, along with flick-fire blasters for our troops.

This is the last battle pack to review for the 2015 releases, and it's been a pretty good year for army builders. While we're still lacking just a plain clone pack, we've gotten Shadow Troopers, Smurf Commandos, and Death Star troopers. Next year we're likely going to see more of a focus on new stuff, so here's to First Order troopers and rebels from Rebels showing up in our packs. At $13 and 105 parts, it's got a few more parts than your average pack, but otherwise... it's mostly just orange.

I think this puts us up to seventeen thousand different types of clones released in the past few years. If we got purple, we could have a whole rainbow corps going.

There are two varieties of clones in this pack, two standard clones and two, what LEGO calls, Airborne Clone Troopers. It's a curious name for them, since there is nothing that I can see that really distinguishes them as airborne troopers. They lack jetpacks, parachutes, or... well, everything that'd I'd associate with being airborne. I guess that little strap or the half suspender is all it takes to be an airborne trooper in the Clone Army. Under the helmets are the two varieties of Clone Trooper heads.

The walker is... well, a walker. The coolest aspect isn't the turret, which, as I said in the Senate Commando review gets old quick, but the handful of dark orange parts. There are a few nifty things to it, but otherwise, it's a pretty basic set. You get some grill slopes and a rounded 2x2 slope, and four of the blasters that no one seems to really like.

It's not a bad little build, and unlike most of the other packs, I can easily see getting more than one of this set if you were going to build up some Geonosis scenes or a nice army. They're a bit specific to that particular setting, but these are probably one of the least absurd varieties of clone. While it would have been nice to see an ARF trooper or something similar in place of one of the airborne guys, or maybe a jetpack or something to make them actual airborne troops... this is a solid army builder set. It's not flashy, but I think I'd have to call it a four out of five just on the "repurchase" nature of the set.

What I liked

Troopers with an armor pattern that makes sense? MADNESS!

I never pass up dark orange parts

Walker has decent utility and can drop into almost any setting, even if it's very similar to previous versions of the mini-walker

What I didn't like

There is nothing airborne about those airborne troopers

Flick-fire stuff gets old quick. Luckily, they give you extras, and you probably have hundreds of extras if you've been collecting Star Wars sets lately

In fairness, one cannot fault Lego for calling them "Airborne" troopers - that's what they've been called since the Episode III merch first hit the shelves, in Hasbro and many other incarnations. And that's exactly what they look like too - there really is nothing to distinguish them as explicitly Airborne, outside of the helmets which apparently are suited for extreme high-altitudes.

It's one of the better battle packs Lego has done, while at the same time being amusingly non-canon: Phase 2 Clone Troopers are never seen on Geonosis or using this specific print of armor, neither normal Clones nor airborne ones. The coloring and setting ends up being specifically a Lego invention. Odd, when there are so many other Clone legions still untouched (a Felucia battlepack with Bly's troopers of the 327th Star Corps would probably have been a better fit).

I'm pretty sure he understood the definition of airborne trooper as he describes in the review. What is not understood is why there is no inclusion of equipment that an airborne trooper would use i.e. A parachute. Here they appear to be regular grunts with a different helmet.

I think it's actually a fair complaint--battle packs are by their nature structured around the figures, and it's conceptually odd for a set to have figures specifically called "airborne" and not have the brick-built components reflect that.

I mean, LEGO's had Clones with jetpacks before, so something a little more airborne here wouldn't have been too out of the question.

joecrowaz on Flickr wrote:Flynn you little wussy with a purple robed fairy for an icon,

There's also this thing called the shift key, it helps to capitalize words at the beginning of a sentence so it seems like someone capable of communication is using a keyboard. Was it that hard?

Perhaps you can think about the tone you ask things in, and how much it undermines what you have to say, when you can't post a coherent message.

I perfectly understand what an airborne trooper is... I enjoy a good bit of history, and they are defined in one of three ways and typically regimented for a specific purpose: to come out of nowhere and attack. They can be dropped (parachute), launched (jetpacks), or transported (dropship). Here, we have a walker. Unless there's a catapult in the background we aren't seeing, not exactly the type of equipment an airborne troop would specialize in.

Basically, it's just a name that was applied with nothing to make it obvious. And that's what I said in my review. If I didn't go to [email protected] and read the product description, I wouldn't have known these were airborne troops. Nothing in their equipment, the armor, or the set itself would identify them as anything other than regular troops.

That article you provided, and why I don't trust the Wookiepedia any more than I typically trust wikipedia, is one paragraph. Most of the background is from video games that maybe five people that will buy this has played, and I'm not sure anyone knows where they showed up in Episode III (okay, I'm sure some do, but that's with liberal use of pause and a great deal of sadness).